What shouldn't/should i store on my SSD for better performance? "512 GB SSD"?

[agent47sa]

I am buying a Y50 UHD 59421859 whose only storage is a 512GB SSD. I did a lot of research and frequently read that one should only keep the OS, apps/games and frequently accessed files on SSD and use a Mechanical hard drive for storage i.e. movies and other media. My questions are:
1) Is the above only advised to save precious SSD storage space.
2) Or is it that the movies and media type things are somehow potentially harmful for SSD and slow it down/wear it out?
3) Should I be keeping Photoshop, MS Office and similar programs on SSD? Do their frequent read/write cycles wear it out quickly?
4) Do I need to worry about the paging file tweaks or Readyboost because that already rig has 16 GB or RAM?
P.S. before you tell me that even without such precautionary measures an SSD will long 2-3 years, I want you to know that this is only an evaluation and know more is better.
Thanks.

 

[Danimal1q2w3]

1) yes
2) no
3) yes you should, but only if the fast load times are important to you. The frequent read/write cycles do wear it out but it won't wear out in a typical lifespan that you would use for it.
4) not sure, but I turned off my page file on an 8gb system used mostly for gaming and video rendering, not editing. Never went over 8gb, runs amazingly smooth with the page file disable.
Install whatever games / programs you want to have blazing fast load times. Even some games on a mechanical drive have fast load times, so allocate your previous ssd space accordingly

 

[agent47sa]

thanks you. Question 1 and 2 were really bothersome. I don't know much about paging file but I've read some articles that one shouldn't disable the page file no matter what. I agree with that because if it's there, it's there for a purpose, even in stronger machines. I have some questions:
1) Provided I have a lot of free space on my SSD, should I be using Photoshop and video rendering or editing programs on my SSD. I mean, can the SSD withstand hardcore gaming and average Photo/video editing tasks for idk 3-4 years? (I can't do the editing tasks on slow external HDD, can I?)
2) I am buying a "WD My Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External USB 3.0 Hard Drive with Auto Backup" for backup and downloads/multimedia storage. Should I prefer it for multimedia storage? (since multimedia makes no difference whether on SSD or HDD, right?)
3) I'll watching movies from my external HDD. My graphics are perfect but will the slow external HDD make it difficult to watch HD videos on it?
4) Some people suggest doing the editing on SSD and storing finished product i.e. videos/pictures on HDD. Is that a problem provided I have SSD space for the products?

 

[USAFRet]

1. A 512GB SSD can hold ALL your applications, and quite a few games
2. No, they are not 'harmful', just that they don't benefit from living on the SSD. Have them elsewhere.
3. All those can live on the SSD easily. Mine has Office, Adobe Lightroom, Paintshop Pro, Visual Studio, etc, etc, etc....No write issues at all.
4. Pagefile. I also have 16GB RAM, and reduced the pagefile to 1GB Min and Max. Have seen zero performance issues.
Readyboost. Don't bother.

My boot drive is a 128GB Kingston HyperX. OS and ALL applications apart from games.
Almost 20 months of 24/7 operation, and it still reports 100% life left. This thing may outlive me.

 

[agent47sa]

4. Pagefile. I also have 16GB RAM, and reduced the pagefile to 1GB Min and Max. Have seen zero performance issues.
Readyboost. Don't bother.

My boot drive is a 128GB Kingston HyperX. OS and ALL applications apart from games.
Almost 20 months of 24/7 operation, and it still reports 100% life left. This thing may outlive me.

you just hinted me on the page file thing. I was thinking of leaving it ON because space of RAM doesn't matter much here but now i will be keeping it it lower like 1 GB but active.btw how much data has your Kingston HyperX written in 20 months. Were you an average editor during this time or an active one?(just trying to get a better view of the life span)

 

[USAFRet]

4. Pagefile. I also have 16GB RAM, and reduced the pagefile to 1GB Min and Max. Have seen zero performance issues.
Readyboost. Don't bother.

My boot drive is a 128GB Kingston HyperX. OS and ALL applications apart from games.
Almost 20 months of 24/7 operation, and it still reports 100% life left. This thing may outlive me.

you just hinted me on the page file thing. I was thinking of leaving it ON because space of RAM doesn't matter much here but now i will be keeping it it lower like 1 GB but active.btw how much data has your Kingston HyperX written in 20 months. Were you an average editor during this time or an active one?(just trying to get a better view of the life span)

CrystalDiskInfo reports 4.84TB total writes. 16251 power on hours (22 months).
For editing, I use Lightroom and Paintshop Pro almost daily. Some portion of Office continuously.

 

[agent47sa]

1) That is very interesting because I've read that average modern SSD has around 700TB total writes and some even cross that. Is that true?
2) So that means you've been using the SSD daily for 22 month for tasks that involve a lot of writing and you are still at 4.84TB total? Please tell me more about your PC esp. SSD quality. I was never into hardware until recently. I am buying a Y50 UHD 59421859. I am not sure about the quality of the SSD it uses so if you would be so kind to tell me about the quality of mine and yours to see if they are alike and how will mine do.
3) Are these editing tasks more demanding than game or browser cache.? If yes, then there's nothing to worry about.

 

[USAFRet]

1) That is very interesting because I've read that average modern SSD has around 700TB total writes and some even cross that. Is that true?
2) So that means you've been using the SSD daily for 22 month for tasks that involve a lot of writing and you are still at 4.84TB total? Please tell me more about your PC esp. SSD quality. I was never into hardware until recently. I am buying a Y50 UHD 59421859. I am not sure about the quality of the SSD it uses so if you would be so kind to tell me about the quality of mine and yours to see if they are alike and how will mine do.
3) Are these editing tasks more demanding than game or browser cache.? If yes, then there's nothing to worry about.

1. The SSD Endurance Experiment: Data retention after 600TB
For most of the drives they are testing, there were zero retired blocks after 600TB+ writes. One of them is the exact one I have, the Kingston HyperX 3k.
So, literally 100x the amount of writes to those compared to my 24/7 use drive.

Some of them have gone over 1PB:
The SSD Endurance Experiment: Casualties on the way to a petabyte

I am in no way concerned about the total writes being a limiting factor in the lifespan of a current consumer grade SSD. You'd have to have an exceptional use case to even get a little bit close to that. Like 100's of GB per day, every day, for years.

2. I don't know which specific drive they include with that, so can't comment on it.
The Kingston HyperX 3K is a pretty average grade SSD. When I bought it, it was inexpensive (for that era).

The rest of the PC is pretty average:
i5-3570k, 128GB Kingston SSD, 128GB SanDisk SSD, 2TB and 3TB HDD's. 16GB RAM.
The Kingston drive has the OS and ALL applications apart from games. The SanDisk holds Downloads and Document libraries. Movies and Music live elsewhere.
Recently, I cranked up a 4GB RAMdisk for a Lightroom scratch space.

The only tweaks I've done are reducing the pagefile to 1GB, turning off hibernation, and redirecting the downloads and documents to the secondary SSD (the SanDisk, which currently has 1.5TB total writes).
It still appears to run as fast as the day I turned it on.

I've not really done anything to try to consciously 'limit' the amount of writes to the drives.

3. As far as use? I'm probably on the high side of average. As said, a lot of photo editing, software development in Visual Studio, MS Office dev, spending far too much time here at Tom's..., a couple of VirtualMachines that live on one of the HDD's (Linux, XP, and Server2012). Netflix movies, etc, etc, etc.


Bottom line: Don't stress over total writes to the SSD. If it dies, it will be from something else.

 

[agent47sa]

Recently, I cranked up a 4GB RAMdisk for a Lightroom scratch space.

Problem Solved. TYVM. I guess I was being paranoid for this is my first SSD exp.
Please explain that cranking procedure and its uses.
Does scratch data perform better on SSD because of it random reading ability?

 

[USAFRet]

Recently, I cranked up a 4GB RAMdisk for a Lightroom scratch space.

Problem Solved. TYVM. I guess I was being paranoid for this is my first SSD exp.
Please explain that cranking procedure and its uses.
Does scratch data perform better on SSD because of it random reading ability?

'cranking up' is simply slang for starting something up.
RAMDisk - a section of system RAM that simulates a small 'hard drive'. Not really necessary, just something I wanted to play with.

Using the SSD will be plenty fast enough.

 

[agent47sa]

Solved! For all those benefits of SSD, I was a little too much concerned. Thanks for the patience and co-op.
I have some other threads too and if you find some new tweaks or issues, please share.